One Thousand and One Nights

by Richard Burton

  235 I have noticed them in vol. ii. 47-49. “To the Gold

  Coast for Gold.”

  236 I can hardly accept the dictum that the Katha Sarit Sagara, of which more presently, is the “earliest representation of the first collection.”

  237 The Pehlevi version of the days of King Anushirwan (A.D. 531-72) became the Humáyun-námeh (“August Book”) turned into Persian for Bahram Shah the Ghaznavite: the Hitopadesa (“Friendship-boon”) of Prakrit, avowedly compiled from the “Panchatantra,” became the Hindu Panchopakhyan, the Hindostani Akhlák-i-Hindi (“Moralities of Ind”) and in Persia and Turkey the Anvar-i-Suhayli (“Lights of Canopus”). Arabic, Hebrew and Syriac writers entitle their version Kalilah wa Damnah, or Kalilaj wa Damnaj, from the name of the two jackal-heroes, and Europe knows the recueil as the Fables of Pilpay or Bidpay (Bidyá-pati, Lord of learning?) a learned Brahman reported to have been Premier at the Court of the Indian King Dabishlím.

  238 Diet. Philosoph. S. V. Apocrypha.

  239 The older Arab writers, I repeat, do not ascribe fables or beast-apologues to Lokman; they record only “dictes” and proverbial sayings.

  240 Professor Taylor Lewis: Preface to Pilpay.

  241 In the Katha Sarit Sagara the beast-apologues are more numerous, but they can be reduced to two great nuclei; the first in chapter lx. (Lib. x.) and the second in the same book chapters lxii-lxv. Here too they are mixed up with anecdotes and acroamata after the fashion of The Nights, suggesting great antiquity for this style of composition.

  242 Brugsch, History of Egypt, vol. i. 266 et seq. The fabliau is interesting in more ways than one. Anepu the elder (Potiphar) understands the language of cattle, an idea ever cropping up in Folk-lore; and Bata (Joseph), his “little brother,” who becomes a “panther of the South (Nubia) for rage” at the wife’s impudique proposal, takes the form of a bull — metamorphosis full blown. It is not, as some have called it, the “oldest book in the world;” that name was given by M. Chabas to a MS. of Proverbs, dating from B.C. 2200. See also the “Story of Saneha,” a novel earlier than the popular date of Moses, in the Contes Populaires of Egypt.

  243 The fox and the jackal are confounded by the Arabic dialects not by the Persian, whose “Rubáh” can never be mistaken for “Shaghál.” “Sa’lab” among the Semites is locally applied to either beast and we can distinguish the two only by the fox being solitary and rapacious, and the jackal gregarious and a carrion-eater. In all Hindu tales the jackal seems to be an awkward substitute for the Grecian and classical fox, the Giddar or Kolá (Cants aureus) being by no means sly and wily as the Lomri (Vulpes vulgaris). This is remarked by Weber (Indische Studien) and Prof. Benfey’s retort about “King Nobel” the lion is by no means to the point. See Katha Sarit Sagara, ii. 28.

  I may add that in Northern Africa jackal’s gall, like jackal’s grape (Solanum nigrum = black nightshade), ass’s milk and melted camel-hump, is used aphrodisiacally as an unguent by both sexes. See. , etc., of Le Jardin parfumé du Cheikh Nefzaoui, of whom more presently.

  244 Rambler, No. lxvii.

  245 Some years ago I was asked by my old landlady if ever in the course of my travels I had come across Captain Gulliver.

  246 In “The Adventurer” quoted by Mr. Heron, “Translator’s

  Preface to the Arabian Tales of Chaves and Cazotte.”

  247 “Life in a Levantine Family” chapt. xi. Since the able author found his “family” firmly believing in The Nights, much has been changed in Alexandria; but the faith in Jinn and Ifrit, ghost and vampire is lively as ever.

  248 The name dates from the second century A. H. or before

  A. D. 815.

  249 Dabistan i. 231 etc.

  250 Because Si = thirty and Murgh = bird. In McClenachan’s Addendum to Mackay’s Encyclopæedia of Freemasonry we find the following definition: “Simorgh. A monstrous griffin, guardian of the Persian mysteries.”

  251 For a poor and inadequate description of the festivals commemorating this “Architect of the Gods” see vol. iii. 177, “View of the History etc. of the Hindus” by the learned Dr. Ward, who could see in them only the “low and sordid nature of idolatry.” But we can hardly expect better things from a missionary in 1822, when no one took the trouble to understand what “idolatry” means.

  252 Rawlinson (ii. 491) on Herod. iii. c. 102. Nearchus saw the skins of these formicæ Indicæ, by some rationalists explained as “jackals,” whose stature corresponds with the text, and by others as “pengolens” or ant-eaters (manis pentedactyla). The learned Sanskritist, H. H. Wilson, quotes the name Pippilika = ant-gold, given by the people of Little Thibet to the precious dust thrown up in the emmet heaps.

  253 A writer in the Edinburgh Review (July, ‘86), of whom more presently, suggests that The Nights assumed essentially their present shape during the general revival of letters, arts and requirements which accompanied the Kurdish and Tartar irruptions into the Nile Valley, a golden age which embraced the whole of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and ended with the Ottoman Conquest in A. D. 1527.

  254 Let us humbly hope not again to hear of the golden prime of

  “The good (fellow?) Haroun Alrasch’id,”

  a mispronunciation which suggests only a rasher of bacon. Why will not poets mind their quantities, in lieu of stultifying their lines by childish ignorance? What can be more painful than Byron’s

  “They laid his dust in Ar’qua (for Arqua) where he died?”

  255 See De Sacy’s Chrestomathie Arabe (Paris, 1826), vol. i.

  256 See Le Jardin Parfumé du Cheikh Nefzaoui Manuel d’Erotologie Arabe Traduction revue et corrigée Edition privée, imprimé à deux cent.-vingt exemplaires, par Isidore Liseux et ses Amis, Paris, 1866. The editor has forgotten to note that the celebrated Sidi Mohammed copied some of the tales from The Nights and borrowed others (I am assured by a friend) from Tunisian MSS. of the same work. The book has not been fairly edited: the notes abound in mistakes, the volume lacks an index, &c., &c. Since this was written the Jardin Parfumé has been twice translated into English as “The Perfumed Garden of the Cheikh Nefzaoui, a Manual of Arabian Erotology (sixteenth century). Revised and corrected translation, Cosmopoli: mdccclxxxvi.: for the Kama Shastra Society of London and Benares and for private circulation only.” A rival version will be brought out by a bookseller whose Committee, as he calls it, appears to be the model of literary pirates, robbing the author as boldly and as openly as if they picked his pocket before his face.

  257 Translated by a well-known Turkish scholar, Mr. E. J. W.

  Gibb (Glasgow, Wilson and McCormick, 1884).

  258 D’Herbelot (s. v. “Asmai”): I am reproached by a dabbler in Orientalism for using this admirable writer who shows more knowledge in one page than my critic does in a whole volume.

  259 For specimens see Al-Siyuti, p and 304, and the

  Shaykh al Nafzawi, p-35

  260 The word “nakh” (to make a camel kneel) is explained in vol. ii. 139.

  261 The present of the famous horologium-clepsydra-cuckoo clock, the dog Becerillo and the elephant Abu Lubabah sent by Harun to Charlemagne is not mentioned by Eastern authorities and consequently no reference to it will be found in my late friend Professor Palmer’s little volume “Haroun Alraschid,” London, Marcus Ward, 1881. We have allusions to many presents, the clock and elephant, tent and linen hangings, silken dresses, perfumes, and candelabra of auricalch brought by the Legati (Abdalla Georgius Abba et Felix) of Aaron Amiralmumminim Regis Persarum who entered the Port of Pisa (A. D. 801) in (vol. v. 178) Recueil des Histor. des Gaules et de la France, etc., par Dom Martin Bouquet, Paris, mdccxliv. The author also quotes the lines: —

  Persarum Princeps illi devinctus amore

  Præcipuo fuerat, nomen habens Aaron.

  Gratia cui Caroli præ cunctis Regibus atque

  Illis Principibus tempora cara funit.

  262 Many have remarked that the actual date of the decease is unknown.

  263 See Al-Siyuti
() and Dr. Jonathan Scott’s “Tales,

  Anecdotes, and Letters,” ().

  264 I have given (vol. i. 188) the vulgar derivation of the name; and D’Herbelot (s. v. Barmakian) quotes some Persian lines alluding to the “supping up.” Al-Mas’udi’s account of the family’s early history is unfortunately lost. This Khálid succeeded Abu Salámah, first entitled Wazir under Al-Saffah (Ibn Khallikan i. 468).

  265 For his poetry see Ibn Khallikan iv. 103.

  266 Their flatterers compared them with the four elements.

  267 Al-Mas’udi, chapt. cxii.

  268 Ibn Khallikan (i. 310) says the eunuch Abu Háshim Masrúr, the Sworder of Vengeance, who is so pleasantly associated with Ja’afar in many nightly disguises; but the Eunuch survived the Caliph. Fakhr al-Din () adds that Masrur was an enemy of Ja’afar; and gives further details concerning the execution.

  269 Bresl. Edit., Night dlxvii. vol. vii. p-260; translated in the Mr. Payne’s “Tales from the Arabic,” vol. i. 189 and headed “Al-Rashid and the Barmecides.” It is far less lively and dramatic than the account of the same event given by Al-Mas’udi, chapt. cxii., by Ibn Khallikan and by Fakhr al-Din.

  270 Al-Mas’udi, chapt. cxi.

  271 See Dr. Jonathan Scott’s extracts from Major Ouseley’s

  “Tarikh-i-Barmaki.”

  272 Al-Mas’udi, chapt. cxii. For the liberties Ja’afar took see Ibn Khallikan, i. 303.

  273 Ibid. chapt. xxiv. In vol. ii. 29 of The Nights, I find signs of Ja’afar’s suspected heresy. For Al-Rashid’s hatred of the Zindiks see Al-Siyuti, p, 301; and as regards the religious troubles ibid. and passim.

  274 Biogr. Dict. i. 309.

  275 This accomplished princess had a practice that suggests the Dame aux Camélias.

  276 i. e. Perdition to your fathers, Allah’s curse on your ancestors.

  277 See vol. iv. 159, “Ja’afar and the Bean-seller;” where the great Wazir is said to have been “crucified;” and vol. iv. p, 181. Also Roebuck’s Persian Proverbs, i. 2, 346, “This also is through the munificence of the Barmecides.”

  278 I especially allude to my friend Mr. Payne’s admirably written account of it in his concluding Essay (vol. ix.). From his views of the Great Caliph and the Lady Zubaydah I must differ in every point except the destruction of the Barmecides.

  279 Bresl. Edit., vol. vii. 261-62.

  280 Mr. Grattan Geary, in a work previously noticed, informs us (i. 212) “The Sitt al-Zobeide, or the Lady Zobeide, was so named from the great Zobeide tribe of Arabs occupying the country East and West of the Euphrates near the Hindi’ah Canal; she was the daughter of a powerful Sheik of that Tribe.” Can this explain the “Kásim”?

  281 Vol. viii. 296.

  282 Burckhardt, “Travels in Arabia” vol. i. 185.

  283 The reverse has been remarked by more than one writer; and contemporary French opinion seems to be that Victor Hugo’s influence on French prose, was on the whole, not beneficial.

  284 Mr. W. S. Clouston, the “Storiologist,” who is preparing a work to be entitled “Popular Tales and Fictions; their Migrations and Transformations,” informs me the first to adapt this witty anecdote was Jacques de Vitry, the crusading bishop of Accon (Acre) who died at Rome in 1240, after setting the example of “Exempla” or instances in his sermons. He had probably heard it in Syria, and he changed the day-dreamers into a Milkmaid and her Milk-pail to suit his “flock.” It then appears as an “Exemplum” in the Liber de Donis or de Septem Donis (or De Dono Timoris from Fear the first gift) of Stephanus de Borbone, the Dominican, ob. Lyons, 1261: it treated of the gifts of the Holy Spirit (Isaiah xi. 2 and 3), Timor, Pietas, Scientia, Fortitudo, Consilium, Intellectus et Sapientia; and was plentifully garnished with narratives for the use of preachers.

  285 The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register (new series, vol. xxx. Sept.-Dec. 1830, London, Allens, 1839); Review of the Arabian Nights, the Mac. Edit. vol. i., and H. Torrens.

  286 As a household edition of the “Arabian Nights” is now being prepared, the curious reader will have an opportunity of verifying this statement.

  287 It has been pointed out to me that in vol. ii. , line 18 “Zahr Shah” is a mistake for Sulayman Shah.

  288 I have lately found these lovers at Schloss Sternstein

  near Cilli in Styria, the property of my excellent colleague, Mr.

  Consul Faber, dating from A. D. 1300 when Jobst of Reichenegg and

  Agnes of Sternstein were aided and abetted by a Capuchin of

  Seikkloster.

  289 In page 226 Dr. Steingass sensibly proposes altering the last hemistich (lines 11-12) to

  At one time showing the Moon and Sun.

  290 Omitted by Lane for some reason unaccountable as usual.

  A correspondent sends me his version of the lines which occur in

  The Nights (vol. v. 106 and 107): —

  Behold the Pyramids and hear them teach

  What they can tell of Future and of Past:

  They would declare, had they the gift of speech,

  The deeds that Time hath wrought from first to last

  * * * *

  My friends, and is there aught beneath the sky

  Can with th’ Egyptian Pyramids compare?

  In fear of them strong Time hath passed by

  And everything dreads Time in earth and air.

  291 A rhyming Romance by Henry of Waldeck (flor. A. D. 1160) with a Latin poem on the same subject by Odo and a prose version still popular in Germany. (Lane’s Nights iii. 81; and Weber’s “Northern Romances.”)

  292 e. g. ‘Ajáib al-Hind (= Marvels of Ind) ninth century, translated by J. Marcel Devic, Paris, 1878; and about the same date the Two Mohammedan Travellers, translated by Renaudot. In the eleventh century we have the famous Sayyid al-ldrisi, in the thirteenth the ‘Ajáib al-Makhlúkat of Al-Kazwini and in the fourteenth the Kharídat al-Ajáib of Ibn Al-Wardi. Lane (in loco) traces most of Sindbad to the two latter sources.

  293 So Hector France proposed to name his admirably realistic volume “Sous le Burnous” (Paris, Charpentier, 1886).

  294 I mean in European literature, not in Arabic where it is a lieu commun. See three several forms of it in one page (505) of Ibn Kallikan, vol. iii.

  295 My attention has been called to the resemblance between the half-lie and Job (i. 13- 19).

  296 Boccaccio (ob. Dec. 2, 1375), may easily have heard of The Thousand Nights and a Night or of its archetype the Hazár Afsánah. He was followed by the Piacevoli Notti of Giovan Francisco Straparola (A. D. 1550), translated into almost all European languages but English: the original Italian is now rare. Then came the Heptameron ou Histoire des amans fortunez of Marguerite d’Angoulême, Reyne de Navarre and only sister of Francis I. She died in 1549 before the days were finished: in 1558 Pierre Boaistuan published the Histoire des amans fortunez and in 1559 Claude Guiget the “Heptameron.” Next is the Hexameron of A. de Torquemada, Rouen, 1610; and, lastly, the Pentamerone or El Cunto de li Cunte of Giambattista Basile (Naples 1637), known by the meagre abstract of J. E. Taylor and the caricatures of George Cruikshank (London 1847-50). I propose to translate this Pentamerone direct from the Neapolitan and have already finished half the work.

  297 Translated and well annotated by Prof. Tawney, who, however, affects asterisks and has considerably bowdlerised sundry of the tales, e. g. the Monkey who picked out the Wedge (vol. ii. 28). This tale, by the by, is found in the Khirad Afroz (i. 128) and in the Anwar-i-Suhayli (chapt. i.) and gave rise to the Persian proverb, “What has a monkey to do with carpentering?” It is curious to compare the Hindu with the Arabic work whose resemblances are as remarkable as their differences, while even more notable is their correspondence in impressioning the reader. The Thaumaturgy of both is the same: the Indian is profuse in demonology and witchcraft; in transformation and restoration; in monsters as wind-men, fire-men and water-men, in air-going elephants and flying horses (i. 541-43); in the wishing cow, divine goats and laughing fishes (i. 24); and in the
speciosa miracula of magic weapons. He delights in fearful battles (i. 400) fought with the same weapons as the Moslem and rewards his heroes with a “turband of honour” (i. 266) in lieu of a robe. There is a quaint family likeness arising from similar stages and states of society: the city is adorned for gladness, men carry money in a robe-corner and exclaim “Ha! good!” (for “Good, by Allah!”), lovers die with exemplary facility, the “soft-sided” ladies drink spirits (i. 61) and princesses get drunk (i. 476); whilst the Eunuch, the Hetaira and the bawd (Kuttini) play the same preponderating parts as in The Nights. Our Brahman is strong in love-making; he complains of the pains of separation in this phenomenal universe; he revels in youth, “twin-brother to mirth,” and beauty which has illuminating powers; he foully reviles old age and he alternately praises and abuses the sex, concerning which more presently. He delights in truisms, the fashion of contemporary Europe (see Palmerin of England chapt. vii), such as “It is the fashion of the heart to receive pleasure from those things which ought to give it,” etc. etc. What is there the wise cannot understand? and so forth. He is liberal in trite reflections and frigid conceits (i. 19, 55, 97, 103, 107, in fact everywhere); and his puns run through whole lines; this in fine Sanskrit style is inevitable. Yet some of his expressions are admirably terse and telling, e. g. Ascending the swing of Doubt: Bound together (lovers) by the leash of gazing: Two babes looking like Misery and Poverty: Old Age seized me by the chin: (A lake) first assay of the Creator’s skill: (A vow) difficult as standing on a sword-edge: My vital spirits boiled with the fire of woe: Transparent as a good man’s heart: There was a certain convent full of fools: Dazed with scripture-reading: The stones could not help laughing at him: The Moon kissed the laughing forehead of the East: She was like a wave of the Sea of Love’s insolence (ii. 127), a wave of the Sea of Beauty tossed up by the breeze of Youth: The King played dice, he loved slave-girls, he told lies, he sat up o’ nights, he waxed wroth without reason, he took wealth wrongously, he despised the good and honoured the bad (i. 562); with many choice bits of the same kind. Like the Arab the Indian is profuse in personification; but the doctrine of pre-existence, of incarnation and emanation and an excessive spiritualism ever aiming at the infinite, makes his imagery run mad. Thus we have Immoral Conduct embodied; the God of Death; Science; the Svarga-heaven; Evening; Untimeliness, and the Earth-bride, while the Ace and Deuce of dice are turned into a brace of Demons. There is also that grotesqueness which the French detect even in Shakespeare, e. g. She drank in his ambrosial form with thirsty eyes like partridges (i. 476) and it often results from the comparison of incompatibles, e. g. a row of birds likened to a garden of nymphs; and from forced allegories, the favourite figure of contemporary Europe. Again, the rhetorical Hindu style differs greatly from the sobriety, directness and simplicity of the Arab, whose motto is Brevity combined with precision, except where the latter falls into “fine writing.” And, finally, there is a something in the atmosphere of these Tales which is unfamiliar to the West and which makes them, as more than one has remarked to me, very hard reading.